Epitomes of Blurs
by Prying Open
Summary: Vanity, corruption, and loss. This is the sobering reality that he is waking up to at last. Sasuke introspective


Title: Epitomes of Blurs

Rating: T for minor language and implications

Summary: Because maybe this is better, after all. He doesn't remember those well-lit, dew-cast days. And, somehow, this means that none of them matter. Nothing matters anymore. This is simply all that his life is. Sasuke introspective

* * *

_He is twelve when he begins to die._

Or perhaps this is an exaggeration. He can't seem to remember; each following day is made up of mornings of red rain and the thunder of cracking bones. But, surely, it was worse when he was younger, oblivious and so obviously helpless. He is fourteen when he thinks this, and his arrogance makes him lift his head up higher and snort derisively at all of the new Sound recruits. He doesn't stop to think - his mind is on an automatic alert basis and he cannot think when killing because it barbs his skin like wires. He is young still, and he does not want to think and remember.

But he thinks that he was dying, anyways. That feeling of terrible oppression and that fear that clouded his mind - _surely, _that is dying, if anything at all can die while still living and breathing. He doesn't really remember friends and companions, but he can vividly recall Itachi crushing him against a wall and strangling him with a clear white hand...

Maybe this is all that matters, he tells himself.

Of course, though, he's wrong. He's missed out on some of the more refined points of living, but it's too _late_, he thinks bitterly, and he submerges himself into his present life.

He would be twenty when he would meet those vague, once-happy but now lost, relics of his past again.

It is Naruto, of course. Naruto, with an acid green vest and a black headband that plasters his bangs to his forehead and infringes yellow strands of hair upon his eyes. _I remember you, _Sasuke thinks suddenly, _You are Naruto. _But he can't seem to bring himself to say it. They both remember each other, and pointing this out would be stupid and trivial and meaningless.

For once, Sasuke is silent. Naruto speaks quietly instead, almost as if he was trying to imitate Sasuke's usual clipped tones, but, of course, they've grown out of those stupid fads, and Naruto wouldn't bother with that anymore. He is speaking quietly because he feels like it and because he doesn't have the energy to scream and cry and yell anymore - whispers are his signature mark now.

"Maybe we can fight again." Naruto tells him slowly, carefully considering his words before speaking, even as melancholy ripples across his eyes like water. "We do miss you, you know."

They're both too tired to fight - both him and Naruto - and they can no longer lift their fists to shout stupid declarations of hatred and love and friendship and forgiveness. They are far too old, and they no longer care, really, because their notions of friendship have long since died already.

Sasuke nods quietly, unable to lift the tendons of his neck higher and stare up to pretend, one last time, that his bloodshot eyes are really Sharingans, and that he hasn't lost everything and everyone and to convince himself that _he still has something left, dammnit. _Because he doesn't have anything left anymore, really, and nothing meant anything. Not anymore. Nothing has ever meant anything since forever.

* * *

**One year ago:**

_Sakura finally confronts him, after her hair has begun to soften - turning the shade of delicate faded pink roses, and lines have begun to form around her face with age. She is middle-aged, and her figure has sharpened and turned impossibly different - She is a different person, Sasuke realizes with a jolt, and he is suddenly lost for words._

_She looks older and delicate - so fragile for a shinobi, really -, but her eyes are as green and cold as ever. "Sasuke..." she mouthes the words across the clear-cut glass that separates them. "You never - " she stops, reconsidering her words, before beginning again - slower and more reasonable, and Sasuke hates her for it because she is like Naruto now, and both have clearly surpassed him. "Realized," she continues, "what you were throwing away, did you?"_

He shouldn't have cared, but, for some reason - her words struck a nerve into his tender mind. His eyes snapped open; the shackles of weariness clattered off of his mind as he stood up, fists balled together and eyes narrowed with self-righteous anger.

On an instinct, he had impulsively shouted, "What do you know?" across the screen - screaming, "_Who do you think you are?" _- his voice vibrating throughout the portion of the room that belonged to him, and Sakura frowns because she cannot hear him through the panels that separate them. She can see him - he's clearly going nuts, dragging his fingers through his hair and screaming some obscene insults, but she can no longer hear him. He is too far away now, and to hear him would mean to cross league after league of inner oceans and dreamed-up dams of water and she privately doesn't really think that he's worth it anymore, so she sits there and waits patiently for him to cross those endless leagues for her.

Sasuke calms down finally (strokes across empty water, both so useless and purposeless because the water will always rise again), feeling utterly humiliated because _it wasn't supposed to be like this _and _he hates the fact that he is clearly losing in this game of wits - to Sakura. To Sakura, of all people..._

He wants to call her stupid and retarded and childish - he wants to be able to revert back to the comfort of guileless insults, but he can feel that it no longer matters, and to give in to such petty wrath would mean that Sakura had won, and Sasuke could never agree to that because she couldn't be right...

"You're wrong." He traces the words deliberately with his mouth, hoping desperately that she gets the point and will stop coming by to his cell. "I gained - everything. Everything I needed." Because he killed Itachi, and that was his life purpose - He would have died for that goal and it was only sensible that he should stop caring now.

Sakura shakes her head. "You don't understand," she informs him, and her eyes are like the smoldering embers of ashes scalded with water - and Sasuke shudders, because he can only imagine what her voice is like now, cool and frosty and so ultimately cold. "You never have."

She steps out of the room - (of course, she's allowed to leave but he isn't - ), and leaves Sasuke mute and dumbstruck, bewildered and stunned at her reply.

A second later - her words click together - _how dare __she_, he thinks - and he smashes his fist against the glass because his goal in life wasn't stupid and pointless and immature like she indicated so condescendingly- and he feels the cuts sear his skin as glass shards embed themselves into his soft flesh, but _it is too late _and_ she is gone._

You are pointless, he thinks absently to himself, before quickly squashing the thought. He refuses to think that now, now that his goal in life has been completed, he is purposeless and useless - he never imagined that he would feel like this, but Kakashi was right all along - He has nothing, means nothing, sees nothing. Just a stretching, inviting darkness. Nothing much at all, really.

* * *

**Epitomes of Blurs**

* * *

_Five years earlier:_

Itachi is standing and Sasuke is falling.

"I could have killed you." Itachi stepped closer, red eyes narrowing and his lips thinning in disappointment. "You're not worth my time."

Sasuke spits out blood, feeling his head spin in circuits and feeling the blood pool over his shirt, but somehow, he manages to cling to the old childhood notion that _he is invincible_ and _he must kill Itachi. If he cannot..._

His fingers tremble underneath his weight, nails scrapping at the coarse rocks below him and his body heaves with shudders and sighs, but he is rising again - he has to, he thinks - and, though he sways and limps unevenly - he is standing and that is all that matters.

"I... I have to kill you." The words come out in a gasp, jumbled together in a single breath but it is comprehensible - and Sasuke allows himself a smile. "You killed... family."

Itachi raises an eyebrow, condescending and disdainful and Sasuke hates him for it - but because his mouth is filled up with more blood than hate, he has to let this gesture slide without retorting with petty words. "You are worthless," he tells Sasuke in frigidly clipped tones.

His eyes widen and rage fills his chest - _he wants to run up and strike Itachi; he wants to stab him and kill him and gouge his eyes out as a souvenir of sweet victory_ - but he cannot move, and the moment that he lurches forward, he falls, face-down, because he can't support his weight anymore - and he coughs out blood instead of those heroic words of killing and justice that he had so thoughtfully planned out.

Itachi leans down and whispers in his ear, "Come back when you learn to hate," before standing back up and brushing off debris from his cloak - as if this was just a business transaction, maybe, or a minor chore - and Sasuke is_ furious_ suddenly, at this show of contempt.

"Wait!" The cry is piercing and desperate, it is _needy_- but he doesn't care, because Itachi turns back to him and that is all that matters.

"What is it now?"

"If I'm so worthless - " Sasuke bites out. "Why don't you kill me?" His eyes stare up challeningly at Itachi - furious red against triangles of black smears across crimson hues. "There has to be a _reason_."

Itachi turns away, though - he can't find it in himself to answer this question; maybe it is beneath his dignity to answer questions from such degrading shinobi, or maybe he doesn't want to tell Sasuke his meaning in sparing him - and even though Sasuke tries, he can only see the blurred outline of black and red before his vision dims to inky darkness.

* * *

He kills Itachi two years later.

The blood that cakes his hands - seeping into the rims of his fingernails - it's all so _wonderful_, because finally - _finally_ - this is _revenge _that he can feel and taste, and his victory is all the more miraculous because of this - he thinks, vaguely, that he should commend Suigetsu for saving Sasuke's life with his innovative use of water to extinguish Itachi's burning fires, but ultimately, it was Sasuke that thrust his knife into Itachi's stomach, so the victory belongs to him alone, as far as Sasuke is concerned.

He feels festive, even. Juugo and Karin are standing besides him - expressions wind-swept and so utterly lost and confused; Suigetsu has coiled up in a corner somewhere, liquidating his injuries to preserve his life by his own means, but Sasuke has won, and nothing can take this away from him. This is what he has been looking for all of his life and he has finally found it and he would dance if he could, this weight lifted off his shoulders made him feel so weightless in the air - so free, but -

"You are..." Itachi halts - blood falls in rivulets down the back of his throat - and his eyes fade from ruby reds to charcoal blacks even as he speaks. "... different, Sasuke."

Somehow, these words spoil Sasuke's mood - Itachi sounds mournful and disappointed, and for some reason, although he has grown up hating his brother, he can't help but feel a twinge of discomfort at Itachi's words of regret - and he lowers his hands and his eyes open again to inevitable reality. "What do you mean?" he asks slowly and challengingly, voice chilling, words deep and menacing because he has won, and Itachi cannot triumph again - and he is sure to emphasis this in his words, but -

He's too late. Itachi's eyes closed and his breathing slowly relaxed, sinking and rising in concurrent waves before coming to an abrupt halt - _he's dead at last - _but he had been wrong; Itachi took his victory away from him with his biting words, and Sasuke is left alone with silence as his only prize.

There is no relief.

He's not happy anymore; that very familiar feeling of anger and pain and regret twists his abdomen painfully, a flagellum across his senses - and he realizes with a jolt that nothing has really changed: he is still angry and bitter and lonely - and killing Itachi changed _nothing_. His life still meant nothing, he still meant nothing, and there was nothing else to do to change this.

* * *

_Three years ago:_

It is raining.

Cool drops of effervescence form on the cracked splinters of glass that run across the expansive windows. For a moment, Sasuke considers shutting the blinds - but that would mean getting up and picking up his knife to slash at the ribbons that hold the curtains meticulously to the side -, He wonders, _what if I get a cold?, _but he's too tired, and this isn't his home anyways - no one wants to see solid evidence that their house was broken into sometime in the night, after all - , and he leaves it open because he just can't bother anymore -

_My life means... nothing. _The thought has crossed his mind before, as shadows of doubt even when Orochimaru had been instructing him on the best way to hold a scalpel, but he has never seriously considered it until now._ Nothing except for death._

The windows rattle; wind snakes around the wooden frame and Sasuke shivers as he feels the frigidity of the wind embrace him, cocooning him into iciness.

He tries to tell himself that it's just the weather - it'll pass soon, he hopes fervently - but it isn't until the next day, when the sun blisters down mercilessly, that he realizes that he's still cold - and, maybe - just _maybe_ - it's not the weather after all. But he doesn't know - and he can't read the warning signs so he brushes it off and simply closes the blinds to block out the sun instead.

* * *

He still remembers this.

"Maybe we can fight again." Naruto says quietly. "We do miss you, you know."

Why does he remember this?

Sasuke merely nods. He's too empty to think up a retort - he doesn't have anything anymore, not even his Sharingan, and he is losing his vision too: he can only barely see Naruto's eyes glare at him with the brightness of chipped sapphires. He can see the brightness, though, and this surprises him; he's never been able to see anything this clearly for years. He resents the fact that this is Naruto that he can see, but he's satisfied that colors are coming back so he doesn't say a word.

Naruto smiles enigmatically at him, engaging in this pointless small-talk of remembrances and forgotten moments - before he drops the bombshell: "I've given up, Sasuke."

Sasuke pauses, mulling over the words slowly, before their meaning hits him like ashes colliding with water. He turns his head up to stare incredulously back at Naruto, because even though he's lost everything - he had been leaning on these constants in life that helps him preserve his sanity in this world of chaos. "You've - "

"It's been too long. Ten years, to be exact. And I'm tired, Sasuke." Naruto says, simply and precisely. "We don't need you anymore. We're letting you go."

"But - " His mouth is dry and words run through his head like leaves in autumn, but nothing is coming out of his mouth. "You just said that we could fight again -_ that you still miss me_. Why are you - " He is hysterical, and he wonders, vaguely, why he is like this when he's been spending so much of his life running away from Naruto and his old friends, but now, _now -_

"Of course we miss you." Naruto cuts across his words like a sieve across grass. "But it's not the same as needing you back. You mean... _nothing_ now." He smiles despite himself. "We can't afford to let you mean anything anymore."

Sasuke thinks for a moment, mind working feverishly to find a loophole in Naruto's logic - and he finds one. It's small and hardly significant, but it's a loophole and it'll work - "Then why are you here, Naruto? Why are you telling me this?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Naruto asks guilelessly. "When my team members informed me of a figure walking around, showing signs of intoxication and mild aggression, I had to come around to check, didn't I?"

"I..." He has a million protests going through his mind - each one flashing scarlet letters before his eyes but when he opens his mouth, all he says is, "I'm not drunk." The words are stupid and lame, and Sasuke instantly wishes that he could take them back, but it's too late and he merely grits his teeth and waits for Naruto's reply.

The blond shinobi grins, and shadows break out over his face in deep contours. "You might as well be, Sasuke. You're no better off, in any scenario that I can think of, anyways." Naruto pauses before turning away - and Sasuke hates him for it because Naruto was supposed to be cheerful and ignorant and stupid - and he hates this Naruto for not living up to those expectations, even though it had been one of the only things that Sasuke had wished for when he was twelve and naive and stupid.

Naruto leans in closer - their foreheads nearly touch and superficial nerves light up like beacons underneath his skin.

"You can't just leave." Sasuke says quickly. His breathing is uneven and his fingers tremble. He wants to tell himself that it's because he's cold, but it's really because he's afraid of being alone, he thinks privately to himself, or is it really even that? Why can he not remember? Why doesn't he know what he feels, and just when did this happen to him? "I've killed Orochimaru. I've killed Itachi. You can't _just - "_

"Goodbye, Sasuke," Naruto whispers solemnly into his ear. And before Sasuke can reply - before he can process what was just said - Naruto stands up and walks away, all of it in a single fluid gesture - and just when Sasuke is about to scream for Naruto to wait, to stand and fight -

To his credit, Sasuke doesn't speak. There is nothing to say, he realizes, because he's lost everything that Naruto had found friendship in some ten years ago. Naruto has matured - and he is now far out of Sasuke's reaches.

He wonders vaguely if he should be upset by this, before he realizes - like an anvil across burning metal and the sparks of ignition and inspiration - what it is that he's lost, exactly, and he suddenly feels like screaming and crying and _fighting, _but an Uchiha doesn't need friends, he tells himself soothingly afterwards. He muses privately to himself: He is alone, yes; but he can survive this. He can survive. He must - because this is all that he feels that he has left.

* * *

One year ago:

He is _dying._

Suigetsu and Karin left years ago, throwing him looks of trepidation and caution even as they hefted up their satchels and left. Even Juugo had gone away after a while, stating that he needed a permanent residence in the forest to soothe his crazed mind, but Sasuke wonders if it was really because they were all afraid of him. Afraid of him and what he'd come and what he could be, he thinks, and for some reason, this thought doesn't fill him up with the malicious happiness that it would have done years ago.

"I'm dying." He whispers to himself. Not really dying, but feeling death tar his bones and flesh. He no longer knows sweetness and mercy - without these, he realizes at last, life is nothing and death is -

_I must die._

Death is favorable. (_The man who lives a sweet life of sapling trees and holy waters loves life. Sasuke is different. He has lived in regrets since he learned to talk. He learns to despise life instead._)

_I will die._

An odd feeling of peace settles over his stomach, curling comfortably around his abdomen and Sasuke finally allows himself to smile. His lips feel awkward, stretching up over his teeth - he hasn't smiled in years, and he is happy because -

_It'll be suicide. Quick. Painless. I have nothing left here._

He grins to himself in the darkness before he turns over and falls asleep in the covers of his bed.

* * *

Death has given him purpose.

He's no longer morose and tired and angry all the time. He's much happier; knowing that his time here is short and the thought that he will soon be nothing more than a rotting, decomposing corpse brings a smile to his lips: _I am, at last, approaching the end._

He nods quietly to himself. He's happy at last. The weightless sensation of triumph that Itachi had taken away from him came back in full bloom - ripe and sweet, tender red tomatoes in blistering summer heat.

He hasn't decided how he'd die yet. He can only feel the vague premonition of death like a balm against his frazzled nerves, but he hasn't decided which ladder he'd descend down into the chasms of eternal sleep by.

His eyes drift towards the bright metal of his sword - blindingly white and clear in the sunlight, hurting his fragile eyes with crystal beams of yellow-white hues.

_The sword?_ It would be almost ironic. He'd spent so many hours chanting prayers - _I must kill Itachi; please, please let me kill him_- by that double-edged weapon, keeping it by him - taking to it, whispering by that flat, gleaming, wonderfully cool sword...

His fingers tremble as he closes his hands around the warm blade - the edges cut into his skin like sieves against silk ribbons and draws blood like a veil around its pristine sides.

Perhaps... The blood would be beautiful, the sword gleaming and glistening in that iridescent red sheen of color, forever shaded crimson...

He pauses, draws a quick breath in revelation._ It's too risky. It's far too uncertain. What if he didn't draw the sword close enough to his heart? What if he didn't manage to completely sever his head?_ He'd live a far more agonizing death, feeling himself die with each lost pint of blood, feeling pain dart down his detached skin and blood slide, slippery and copper in taste, down his teeth.

He shudders and throws the sword off to the side - it clatters off on some rocks, he hears it give a metallic scream of steel as it scrapes itself against the rough contours of boulders in falling - and sighs. He can just barely see the sword gleam as it falls -

_I'm losing my sight._This thought terrifies him. Of course, it was only natural; it happened to Itachi as well. In that fatal fight, Itachi had clawed at his eyes, fingers like vultures suddenly, in their urgency; blood had spurted and his eyes had molted blue-black spots. He was terrified, hating the fact that his eyes would molt the same disgusting shade of black and flecks of red, hating and fearing it. Utterly, childishly, witlessly terrified.

That's why he decided with his resolution to die: _I want to choose a death that I can see. Something that will linger in my memories forever._

The fiery gleam of the sword could provide this to him - that clear brightness of metal would burn itself into his mind, he knew this - but it would be horrifying if he didn't embed the blade deep enough into his skin.

He has lost his Sharingan. Constant use of it - on his enemies, acquaintances, friendly allies, Karin, Suigetsu, Juugo - had whitened out the red pupils and blurred the triangular commas to normal black irises. Itachi never told him this: _There is a limit as to how many times you can continuously active your Sharingan without due restrictions. After a while, your Sharingans, in an attempt to save your sight, self-destruct._

He has lost his Sharingans. His eyes are normal now - a placid black shade of color that is slowly fading away to listless gray hues. He's losing his sight; he doesn't want to go blind; he thinks:

_I want to be able to see my death. I want to see the world around me. Please, please, please, let me see in those last moments..._

Bright sapphire chips of diamonds suddenly come back to mind.

_Sapphires?_

He draws in a quick breath in the cold morning air. _Naruto_, he remembers. And those bright sapphire eyes that glared at him when he returned, staggering and swaying as if drunk, on that terrible night long ago...

It is stupid, of course, and so very childish, even though Naruto has already told him off - told him that he means nothing anymore - but -

_I'll be able to see it. My death. _Naruto would kill him - and those cerulean slits of colors would stay in his mind. He would remember it because it actually meant something to him; it signified all that he had lost, everything he had thrown away to gain a meaningless purpose.

_It'll be quick. Painless. The death of a contrary shinobi._ He closes his eyes. _And I will see forever._

* * *

Nothing went as planned.

"You're not supposed to be here." That is the first thing that Naruto tells him when he sees Sasuke. "You were never supposed to return."

Shadows, faces, names, and places. He doesn't remember, he thinks suddenly. "I had to," he chokes out at last. "There's something that I still need from Konoha." And his eyes searching for colors and resting on those vivid streaks of blue sky and sapphire.

That is all that he can say.

Blurs, colors, screams. A hint of skies narrowing down to slits and the dark taste of concrete.

When his eyes open again, he finds himself surrounded.

"I did warn you." Naruto tells him amiably, even as ANBU rest their cold blades across Sasuke's throat. "But you wouldn't listen, would you?" And he walks away coolly, without a care in the world.

Bile rises in Sasuke's throat, eyes widening, fists clenching. But then something heavy hits him at the back of his skull _( traitor, they whisper to him quietly ) _and before he can even scream out his rage, the darkness rises to gather him and he falls into that dark abyss without a sound.

* * *

Cell 66, emblazoned in bold black ink on a metal plate. Steel bars stand guard by the sign, stretching out dark arrowed points inwards, to the circle of space hidden within.

"You're a prisoner of war, Sasuke." Naruto tells him quietly. "A prisoner of war. You mean nothing else here."

"War?" Sasuke says slowly, eyes opening and body rising to stand before the bars, knowing that he sounded ridiculous but being unable to help himself. "What war?"

"Ours," Naruto says simply. "Konoha's private battle with the red-eyed Uchiha. Only, you've lost even that, haven't you, Sasuke?"

"You weren't supposed to know," Sasuke stated, voice quiet and factual. "About me losing my sight." He clears his throat uneasily, trying to cover the imperfection that mars his words.

Naruto smiles serenely back at him, smile fractured against the prison bars that face Sasuke. "Ibiki's health scans are remarkably informative," he shrugged. "Everyone knows now."

"Is..." He pauses, clears his throat, thinks for a moment before continuing. "Has Konoha decided to execute me?"

This time, his smile is positively demonic. "No, Sasuke," he says. "Of course not. We're keeping you in permanent isolation so we can harvest your eyes. How cool is that?" And then he skips away before Sasuke's look of bewilderment, grins, jumps out of the room, and closes the door behind him in a smash of colors and sounds.

* * *

_Five months later:_

They take him to a new room, one of the clear whiteness of a hospital and with a glass cover splitting the room into half. They take him to one half of the room and tell him to wait. The room is new, much cleaner and nicer than his old prison cell which only had a light bulb spewing out yellow light and had paint peeling off of the walls, whereas this one has fluroescent lighting and smells faintly of new paint.

"Stay here." They had ordered him. "She will be arriving shortly."

"She?" Sasuke inquired quickly, before they could leave and ignore him. "Why am I here? Who is it?"

One of them pause, yellow cat mask turned towards him. Black eyes stare at him from behind the porcelain slits of gold and yellow. "Someone important. She doesn't like the prison cell and she doesn't want to talk to you. She just wants to visit." A pause, and then the ANBU official grudgingly adds, "Just to see."

Sasuke nods slowly, sits down, waits patiently as he's told to do, mind buzzing with puzzling questions and ensnaring ideas. Who is this? He simply wonders to himself: Who would have this much prestige? And he eagerly anticipates.

He doesn't know what to say when he sees Sakura walk into the room. He is simply stunned, and his breath fogs the glass as he lifts a tremulous hand and presses it against the wall, looking for stability, something safe.

_Sakura_, he thinks. _It's Sakura? _A pause, and then he thinks and begins to regain himself. It was Sakura. _Sakura. _And what did Sakura ever mean? She was nothing.

Was she here to send him flowers and chocolates again? He thinks desperately, latching onto memories to keep his mind clear. Was she really so stupid? Had she not changed at all? Sasuke snorts derisively when he regains himself. His head is inclined higher, more confident. What an idiot, he thinks. This is all superficial, she can't be an idiot if she has prestige in Konoha, after all, but he chooses to ignore this in favor of his own beliefs. He scowls across the glass instead.

Sakura smiles bitterly at him and then mouthes vicious, biting words at him. Insults, threats, _who did you think you were? Just what did you think that you meant, to waltz in and out of Konoha like some ballerina on a string?_ and jabbing hostility. She no longer wears pink, instead she is clad in a teal dress that seems to burnish her hair. _You are despicable_, she spits at him.

He is wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Sakura continues, pressing her advantage to his silence until she has nothing left to say. Finished at last, she tucks a pink strand of hair back into place, places a key into the door on her side of the room, and leaves, simple as that.

Just a second later, he is escorted, dazed and swaying and so utterly confused, back to his prison cell to think.

* * *

"I don't know anything anymore," Sasuke confesses to Naruto one day, months later. "Let me die. Kill me." There were so many new faces, so many new names and new sneers, insults, and faces that peered at him from within that dark cell. "Please... It's all that I have left."

* * *

_One year later..._

"You want to die, Sasuke?" Naruto's sapphire blue eyes stare penetratingly down at him. "Do you really?"

Sasuke inclines his head with a soft smile, too tired and worn out to nod his affirmation. "I dream about it sometimes, Naruto." He says after a pause. "Death means salvation to me."

Naruto nods, eyes softening; these endless days, these years, of talking and getting to know each other better without the obnoxious screaming and snorting seems to have begun to curb their animosity.

A heart-beat. _Wait_, a voice commands. Sasuke stirs, restless.

"Konoha will let you keep your eyes." Naruto informs him quickly. "They're too faded, too diseased. When you die, you'll die with your sight."

"What a comfort." Sasuke says dryly. "When I can hardly see anything anymore."

Naruto pauses before remarking. "There's something else too, you know." He adds pleasantly. "They've asked me to kill you, if you wanted to die, that is."

Sasuke's head snapped up. He is no longer tired, worn out, quiet. He looks up, frantic. Death, he thinks, and his eyes are wide with disbelief. "Are you serious?" he demands. "Did they really?" He stands up, sways on his feet, but manages to stay up with his hands clutching at the prison bars.

"You haven't changed you mind, have you?" Naruto responds coolly.

"No." Sasuke says quickly. "Not at all. Is that why you came down here? Are you going to kill me now?"

"If you want," Naruto shrugs. "Konoha will cremate your body and bury it somewhere. I don't really care."

He doesn't, of course, but Sasuke still does.

A pause. Blue eyes and black irises. Black steel beams that rattle sometimes when he's sleeping.

"Yes."

Naruto smiles. "Step toward the door and close your eyes." He thinks for a moment and then elaborates. "We don't want an escape attempt, after all."

Sasuke nods quickly, steps towards the door with unceremonious haste. His eyes close, his breathing relaxes.

Naruto steps up quietly and obligingly, keys jangling in his pocket. A second later, a key is set inside, twisted, and then removed from the lock. The door clicks open.

Crimson scars, darkness, pain. Burns. Lacerations on his throat. Red, red, red, he thinks.

His eyes flash open. Blue skies, crimson rain. Sapphires.

He is falling, his sight failing, his breathing uneven and labored with sudden pain. _He cut my throat,_ Sasuke thinks. He is deliriously happy, the feeling spreading like exotic flowers across his mind. He is closer to dying than he ever thought was possible. Darkness spreads inky blots across his eyes and his breathing begins to slow down, his heart furiously beating an irregular pattern in his chest but failing, nonetheless.

Naruto leans down, whispers in his ear. "Happy birthday, Sasuke," he says quietly ( _It's my birthday? Sasuke thinks, before remembering: yes. Yes. I've almost forgotten, but yes. It is, it is. )_and stands up.

The door shuts behind him. Just a minute later, Sasuke's eyes close. _Sapphires,_ he had thought a split second before, and smiled.

End

* * *

This is more of a short introspective piece on how things could have turned out, how things should have been. There's no ultimate color that defines us, and people constantly slip up, constantly forget. A small reminder into the patchwork of our spreading lives, you could even say.

The purpose of this story isn't to sabotage any characters. It's natural for people to become tired, to give up childish obsessions. Friends are part of this childish obsession at time. Kishimoto is wrangling all of the fame that he can out of Sasuke's ties to Konoha. Let him. It's his series. This is only a small alternate thought: What if justice could be served? What if that concept did exist, did work and play out in our lives like it did in the movies? This is my caricature of the idea.

Naruto and Sakura can be vicious, for critics that indicate that they wouldn't treat an old-time friend like that. Konoha believes in black-white theories. It's been ten years. Sasuke has betrayed them, run away from them, tried to kill them. They're returning the favor, you could say. No one can live the life of a perpetual martyr without snapping. This is their idea of a possible justice, a possible deliverance, perhaps.

Thanks for reading.


End file.
